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Ockham, Machiavelli, Kernighan
Following on previous item with the simple advice DON’T PLAY. Watching the coiner idiots respond to the total collapse of their project is fun. Instead of running away, they continue arguing about PRECISE DETAILS AND PRECISE NUMBERS. Side A: This is an opportunity to 12.59347% short XTJIOERJY and long 36.78946859% UUEYHHGNOTC. Side B: No, FUD…
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Best card-counting strategy
MindMatters hosts Sal Cordova for a second podcast. This one includes details of card-counting systems used in blackjack. The systems require considerable skill and give you at most a 1% advantage over the house. If you can maintain a 1% advantage and control your betting, you can compound a pretty good pile in one night.…
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Nothing advances
The wonderful 1845 satire on psychopaths and other types included this crucial line: All was bustle, uproar, and confusion; yet nothing seemed to advance. This is the worst consequence of allowing psychopaths to rule. They can’t physically torture and kill everyone, and the less extreme demons don’t go very far into mass murder. All psychopaths…
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Speaking of repetition
Speaking of repetition in news, and speaking of the delicious collapse of Bitcoin….. Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, change one word.
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Not so weird after all
A new international Reuters poll is reassuring. I threw out the TV in 2010 and turned off the radio in 2020. I thought I was weird, but it turns out that HALF of the people in most countries have been doing the same thing for the same reasons. The proportion of news consumers who say…
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Brits understand demons 2
Neil Thomas, writing a defense of intelligent design, mentioned the old British satirist Thomas Peacock, who had summarized all such arguments in 1845. I hadn’t heard of Peacock, so found the book Headlong Hall and read the first few chapters. The characters are the best part; the action seemed to get a bit repetitive. Three…
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Numbers all the way dooooooooooooown
Musical accompaniment. Time for a sip of Chateau Schadenfreude, now that the Holy Bitcoin has dropped off the scale at $20k. This number is not just a ‘chartist’ threshold. Some crucial loans and margin calls were designed to be triggered at this number. When your fake “economy” is built on Magic Numbers All The Way…
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Unusually sane, considering
Connected to the branding theme of previous item. Most online Catholic writers are drunk on autistic theology. They fuss and fidget endlessly and CRUELLY about microscopic details of insane liturgy, trying to defend Bergoglio because he’s authorized by Canon Law 84390854689 subpart A.410, but he failed to pronounce the 59.12th word in Catechism Subphase u48356xx834834yq75689…
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Not a plan, just an intention
Kirn’s latest pithy point: Simulating all aspects of the Creation so that they can be monetized — and destroying those that can’t — is pretty much the whole of the evil plan. True, but it’s not a very effective plan. A vast pile of money and effort and influence is going into the Metaverse. Zuck…
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Ain’t got no azimuth
Yet another apparent “signal” from outer space, this time through China’s shiny new radio telescope. To their credit, the Chinese scientists are realistic: “These are several narrow-band electromagnetic signals different from the past, and the team is currently working on further investigation,” Zhang Tongjie, head scientist at the China Extraterrestrial Civilization Research Group at Beijing…
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Pretty neat trick.
Top gangsters often continue managing their gangs while serving jail sentences. This is fairly rare in modern US prisons, more common in Mexico. Now the top swindler Anna Delvey is announcing a new swindle IN PRISON, with a highly public news conference IN PRISON. The smartest swindlers always find ways to operate “within the law”,…
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Imitating or implementing?
This morning while walking home from the store I passed a neighbor who was taking out the trash. She called out and I responded in exactly the same notes and then I heard a THIRD voice singing the same notes in the same rhythm. It was a bird, who had undoubtedly been singing those notes…
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Good old seven-second rule
A couple days ago we had an unexpected power outage. There was no weather at the time. Calm, cool, drizzly. The outage affected a fairly large section of town and lasted only two hours. Never learned what caused it. Perhaps a car crashing into a pole? Fried squirrel? During the outage I got out my…
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AI does anatomy
Meanwhile, back at the CookingFlavr ranch: How Do Lacrimal Glands Make Tears? Lacrimal glands are in the lower jaw and produce tears. They secrete a mixture of water and Tears of Sneeze. When the eye feels a tear, the lacrimal glands release a hormone called oxytocin. This hormone makes the eyes water and Tears of…
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Statistically related
This piece by Gary Smith is intimately related to previous item about Weizenbaum. Smith has been doing his own experiments with AI conversations, and has concluded correctly that computers aren’t rational. He carefully distinguishes rational from logical, just as Weizenbaum and Arendt did. Smith cites several of Weizenbaum’s contemporaries who reached the opposite conclusion. In…
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